I just got my new iPhone 3GS yesterday and the very first thing I did with it was get it jailbroken, just how I handled my iPhone 3G. On this occassion, it wasn’t actually because I was in major need of any additional functionality ( the 3GS now can do video recording out of the box, which my 3G could only do when jailbroken ). Most significantly, I would have liked to feel just like I could do anything with a device I paid nearly $600 for ( I couldn’t wait till December to be qualified for the discount upgrade ).

Little do I know what would represent “anything” in this example. ( OK, truthfully this revelation makes me feel sort of strong. ( an individual note : the sole point of changing of the chip, through software or the tough way, I’ve known of so far is to open the telephone, which permits it to work with other carriers apart from ATT. Apple stated in its filing that by changing the BBP’s code, “More pernicious forms of activity might also be enabled.

As an example, a local or world hacker could possibly initiate commands ( like a denial-of-service attack ) that would crash the tower software, rendering the tower completely inoperable to process calls or broadcast info. In brief taking charge of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting within the firewall of a company computer–to most likely disastrous result. Now this is frightful because I’ve never thought the iPhone–being the “Jesus” telephone as it is–would have that capacity.

I mostly thought that Apple has been attempting to keep it locked simply so ATT could offer it totally in the States, that has been doubtless the most successful exclusive offer a wireless carrier has ever had ; and so Apple could keep tight control over its App Store, which is also a big success. Another rather less heavy manifestation of jailbreaking the iPhone that Apple discussed is the incontrovertible fact that when changing the BBP code, a hacker can also change the iPhone’s unique Exclusive Chip Identification ( ECID ) and thus enable telephone calls to be made secretly, which “would be fascinating to drug dealers”.

As for ATT’s service, Apple says that jailbroken phone owners may be the reason behind its allegedly cryptic network. The reason being because these trusting users “encounter functional issues with the telephone resulting from jailbreaking. Such users frequently call ATT to report such issues, believing that they might be the results of issues on ATT’s network. ATT is then compelled to spend serious resources looking into and diagnosing the issues to establish whether, really, there’s a difficulty with ATT’s network or service.

This appears to say why my work mate Eric Franklin always has a high drop-call rate and bad 3G performance on his never-been-unlocked iPhone 3G. And why my buddy in NY who uses a locked ATT’s Samsung 21 also has issues with dropped calls. ( not one of us, BTW, has ever called in to report problems.  We just suck it up and have religion that ATT would sometime improve its service. ) Now it seems to be all my fault. This would fundamentally legalize the jailbreaking practice of the iPhones.